Mathematical expressions for calculation of oil‐polymer blends

A study of the recent literature emphasized the importance of blending polymers with oils for improving the performance characteristics (like flexibility, corrosion resistance, etc. ) of adhesives, coatings and laminates. Investigation of the available data revealed that several properties of such oil‐polymer blends could be correlated by molar refraction (R M ), with reasonable accuracies. The properties of the linseed oil‐polystyrene (PS) and linseed oil‐polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) blends studied are iodine value (IV), hydroxyl value (HV), inherent viscosity (η), melting temperature (T M ), and glass transition temperature (T g ). In the case of safflower, palm and peanut oil‐sucrose polyester formulations, the viscosity at 40 °C (η 40 ) and the melting point T M have been correlated by R M with the average absolute deviations (ē) of 17.8% and 3.0%, respectively. Using the orientation polarization P O (to represent polarity) in addition to R M , η 40 and T M of oil‐polyester formulations could be calculated with ē values of 8.9% and 1.7%, compared to 17.8% and 3.0% using R M alone. The results indicated the importance of P O in improving the accuracy of predictions for properties.